Copyright Law: A Practitioner’s Guide(Second Edition) provides up-to-date analysis of court decisions and practical advice for the protection of copyrights. Written by two nationally recognized lawyers who have litigated major copyright cases, including those involving digital forms of communication, this authoritative treatise also includes a useful detailed flowchart using an actual case result to illustrate how damages and profits are calculated.

In the latest update—release #4 (September 2020) , the authors expand the book with discussion of the following topics, among others:

• Unprotectable subject matter—government edicts: Government edicts, such as state statutes, ordinances, regulations, and judicial opinions, have long been deemed to be not subject to copyright. See new § 2:7.1[B].
• Visual Artists Rights Act—remedies: VARA subjects violators of the attribution and integrity rights to the usual civil remedies for copyright infringement under section 501. See § 4:2.2[A], at note 325.1.
• Visual Artists Rights Act—“work of recognized stature”: In Castillo v. G&M Realty, L.P., the Second Circuit held that the work in question must be “of high quality, status, or caliber that has been acknowledged as such by a relevant community.” See § 4:2.2[E], at note 341.
• Deposit requirement—websites and website content: The Copyright Office has issued a circular offering guidance on the deposit process for websites and website content. See § 5:2.5, at note 28.
• Registration: Resolving a circuit split, the Supreme Court has determined that registration occurs when the Copyright Office issues the certificate of registration and not when a copyright owner submits the application, materials, and registration fee to the Copyright Office. See § 5:3.1, at note 44.
• Fair use—transformativeness factor: According to the Fourth Circuit, that the respective “subjective intents” of the creator of the work and of its user differ may not be of particular relevance in the transformativeness inquiry, insofar as those differences do not necessarily result in the creation of “new aesthetics or a new work.” See § 8:4.2[A], at note 86.1.
• States’ sovereign immunity: The Copyright Remedy Clarification Act (1990) abrogated state sovereign immunity from actions for copyright infringement. See § 11:7.7, at note 396.

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